Despite SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) making headlines in the news, there is another bill pending in our government that may be much more threatening to our rights than anything that has ever been passed in our country’s history. The Enemy Expatriation Act (EEA) will allow the U.S. Government to take away citizenship of anybody that is considered a hostile enemy or supporting hostility towards the U.S. Government. In other words, the American government will be able to instantly take away a citizen’s Constitutional rights whenever they consider a person “hostile” to the United States.

The legal definition of “hostility” is any conflict subject to the laws of war. But with the War on Terrorism being so encompassing and everybody, especially government officials, to be tremendously paranoid on what to consider “hostile”, the government could justify the stripping of the rights of virtually anybody. The bill itself is frightening, but the bill’s similarities to past acts are even more daunting. The EEA is comparable to the Nazi Faction’s Nuremberg laws which allowed Adolf Hitler to take German citizenship from those who were suspected of going against the Hitler regime. Hitler did strip German citizens of their rights for being “suspected” of going against him, but Hitler also stripped rights because of skin color and blood type, stereotyping certain groups as “terrorists” the same way we do now.

It is rather unfortunate that the SOPA and PIPA acts are making the headlines while the EEA is going under the radar. Yes, SOPA and PIPA are very controversial, but if more people were to gain knowledge about the Enemy Expatriation Act, the amount of indignation and protest would be surreal.